Your New Years Resolution

Aligning roughly with the calendar year, based on the Chinese zodiak we’re about to go from the year of the dog to the year of the pig. But for me, in the “Information Technology Zodiak” , 2018 was the year of the hack, just as it was in 2017 and just as it will be for 2019.

I’ve not dedicated much time to keeping a record of all of the high profile breaches this year, but just off the top of my head I can think of:

The Starwood breach which, as a frequent traveller, probably guarantees I’ve been impacted in some as yet unknown way,

The Quora breach, a site that is very popular amongst I.T professionals.

The Google+ breach, which peeved me more about the fact that it was hush hushed by Google in order to preserve reputational damage. Um…what happened to looking after customers?

Adding to that list, whilst we were discussing security this year at Sangam 18, indian friends reminded me of the enormous Aadhaar breach at the start of the year, which is perhaps one of the largest of all time in terms of numbers of people impact.

And to be honest, I lost track of how many, which, where etc the amount of dramas that Facebook had.

I’m a realist so I’m not saying that hacks can always be avoided, or that anyone who gets hacked is being negligent. Sometimes even the best efforts are not good enough, because the hacks get more and more sophisticated all the time. But at the very least, I think we should set a goal for 2019 that all of our data at rest should be encrypted. If we can at least start with that small step, then at least if our data at rest is somehow nefariously obtained, it will still have a veil of protection.

So what’s your I.T resolution for next year? I hope it’s security related.